Thursday, November 1, 2012

Quantum Computing: CIA and Bezos Invest in D-Wave Systems In.

Answer a simple Question and win a million bucks:

P vs. NP

The Clay Mathematics Institute posted the prizes for seven damn-near insoluble math problems back in 2000.
The first of the Millennium questions to be solved, Poincaré's Conjecture, was proved in 2006. In 2010 the Institute announced that Dr. Grigoriy
Perelman had indeed resolved the Conjecture. It was a big deal in Topology circles.
Perelman turned down the money and went back to his office.

Next up, one of the most difficult unanswered problems in Computer Sciences P vs. NP which will probably take a quantum computer to solve.*

I've mentioned that one of our interests are screaming fast computers. Quantum Computing is one approach to get there. Thanks to a reader for the heads-up on D-Wave.
First up, Reuters, October 4:

D-Wave Systems, a
Vancouver-based company that aims to develop quantum-computing
applications, said on Thursday it had received $30 million in
funding from investors including the firm that manages Amazon
founder Jeff Bezos's venture investments and an investment arm
of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The investments, from Bezos Expeditions and In-Q-Tel, mark a
vote of confidence in the potential for practical applications
for the emerging technology underpinning quantum computing.

Advocates say the controversial technology works orders of
magnitude faster than classical computing and has the potential
to revolutionize fields such as drug development. It has
remained mainly an academic concept since its introduction 30
years ago, but investors see new commercial opportunities.

Last year, D-Wave sold a $10 million superconducting-based
quantum computer to Lockheed Martin, which installed it
at the University of Southern California. This year, it hopes to
sell a much more powerful version.

It is also marketing its own quantum-computing capability to
other companies, which can tap into D-Wave's facilities using
cloud computing, or remote servers. D-Wave chief executive Vern
Brownell describes it as infrastructure-as-a-service, adding the
company inked its first contract in the area a few weeks ago.

The company's technology is controversial in the scientific
community, in part because D-Wave places a premium on working at
large-scale rather than perfect error correction.Some scientists question whether it is quantum computing at
all, but D-Wave Brownell dismisses the skeptics.

"It's very simple to determine if you've built a quantum
computer or not," he says. "If your machine is running a quantum
algorithm - that is, a problem solving a procedure forbidden by
the laws of classical physics but permitted by quantum mechanics
- it's a quantum computer." ...MORE

Next Big Future has been following the company pretty closely, also Oct. 4: